Limp Limp Limp

On Tuesday in PE I ended up pulling a muscle on my right leg's calf while exercising, and ever since then I've had to limp everywhere. Stairs are a particularly powerful foe. Yet strangely, if I run, it doesn't hurt that much as walking normally does.

However, tomorrow is Friday, and then Midwinter break sets in. I should definitely recover by the end of the break. :D

For one, you didn't pull it. If you pulled it, you wouldn't be able to walk. Also, the less limping, the better. Try to walk as normally as possible. I learned pretty quickly after dislocating my knee so many times and tweaking things due to track practices that walking with a normal gait was infinitely better and helped keep normal flexibility and movement in comparison to limping and trying to "favor" my stronger leg to put less pressure on my knee, which made it worse.

Make sure you are icing your calf! You probably can't do it right after athletics or P.E. at school, but when you get home, make sure you're icing it for at least 20 minutes every day. Don't have a bag of ice or a refreezable cooler pack? Use a bag of frozen peas, carrots, corn, etc. It will help with swelling and recovery. Some sort of painkillers, such as ibuprofen will help a bit with swelling as well if you have them available.

Also, make sure you are stretching your calf, both before and after physical activity. People tend to forget to stretch after workouts or P.E., and that's the best time to do it, seeing as your muscles will be warmed up and much more flexible.

Nukaya - Wow, thanks for all that information! For one, I honestly have no clue what exactly happened with my leg, but half the adults I talked to said I had pulled a muscle. It's gotten better today, though.I'll have to keep all those tips in mind in case that ever happens again~

Yeah, jargon can get weird. To me, there's a difference between straining something and pulling something. At the worst, it's probably just a light strain that will take a week or two to recover. Pulling a muscle would be like, well, have you ever seen a race or an athletic event where someone is running full speed and all of a sudden they just stop and pretty much either fall or take a few hops on their other leg and have to sit down? That's most likely a badly pulled muscle, where the muscle is badly torn. It kind of renders you to the point that you just cannot move.

If you think it's starting to get better, keep stretching and icing anyway! One thing we do for track is ice (either bags of ice for knees, hamstrings, ankles, etc., or an ice bath) after nearly every practice as a preventative measure, as well as to help with recovery.

Nukaya - Quite so, apparently. The pulled-muscle incident is a classic scene in some movies. So how might you describe what my situation was, given that it began while I was exercising?I'll definitely keep that up, though. Obviously I would want my leg to get totally better.

I'm guessing (and don't quote me seeing as I'm not a doctor or physical therapist and I'm just basing this on my own experience and what I've heard from other people) that it was because of something like not warming up or stretching enough before you really got into whatever activity you were doing in P.E.

Sometimes it just happens sort of randomly though. I strained my hamstring pretty bad one time when I was stretching after a track practice. It was super weird, because I was still pretty warm from working out, the stretch I was doing was one I'd done loads of times before, and I wasn't stretching my leg beyond my limit or anything. It can kind of just happen randomly. You might have tweaked it a bit prior and not really noticed, but then it suddenly gets worse and you really notice it later because of an odd misstep or too fast of a movement.

Nukaya - Quite so, apparently. The pulled-muscle incident is a classic scene in some movies. So how might you describe what my situation was, given that it began while I was exercising?I'll definitely keep that up, though. Obviously I would want my leg to get totally better.

Ddude - I really hope those get better for you, man.

They make movies about pulling muscles? O_o It scares me what people find entertaining these days...

Yeah, I'd just listen to Nukaya, because she's using really long words that I don't understand. =P

Thanks, Disky. =) You're like a sister to me. Except I barely talk to you and have no idea what you look like and I only know you as a fellow staffie from another forum. Actually, you're more like this disembodied 64 by 64 anime head talking in my ear. xD

Nukaya - We didn't warm up before running ten laps (sadly enough, I think therein may be the problem), but after the laps we did some stretching and then broke into an exercise routine. It was towards the end of the routine that my calf starting hurting.

Ddude - Well not entire movies about the idea of pulled muscles. >__>And that's a weird kind of sister. Just saying. =P